There's very, very little I miss about living in the midwest. I was born, not raised, a west coast kind of guy. Besides proper thunderstorms, decent BBQ, and lazy float trips down warm rivers the only thing I miss are fireflies. Lightening bugs, as we called them as kids, don't live on this side of the Rockies in North America and when I decided to move out here I didn't think I'd miss them.

I was wrong. I miss fireflies terribly. Not the insects themselves per se, but all the good times that happened along with them. Fireflies came out during the last grainy minutes of daylight, as the temperature dropped from "searing" to "merely uncomfortable", and the evening breeze would come up and finally provide some relief from the broiling humidity. Emerging from underneath shade, out of doors and willing to venture a few feet away from sources of fresh water, people kids would emerge and congregate as they are wont to do at those ages.

Embued with the cruelty common to all children, I was the undispusted master Firefly Swatter as a young lad. This was a competion the neighborhood kids would do every few nights or so. We'd get our trusty wiffle bats and see how much glowy guts we could smear on them, one bug at a time. The winner had the glowiest bat by the time the fireflies settled down for the night.

Later, fireflies became synonomous with hanging out with girls, clumsily fumbling through the rituals of attraction: signal and response, just like the insects floating around us. Cool damp air, the warm earth, the drone of countless insects, fireflies twinkling about, and the soft moans of pleasure are and forever will be indelibly inked upon some primitive part of my brain.

Shortly after the wonderfulness that is girls became known to me, so did booze. Drinking with my friends, picking up on girls, listening to music out at the edge of the county are about the only parts of my highschool years that I remember fondly. Then I grew up, and got my own place to live, and a job, and suddenly there just wasn't time for sitting around for a few hours doing almost nothing.

Why the sudden melancholic introspection? Because I missed firefly day. Not that I have a lot to contribute to this study headed by the Boston Museum of Science, but if you live in a firefly zone you can still sign up to participate. It appears, that like bats, frogs and several other creatures of the summer night, their numbers are inexplicably dropping. Thanks to Bug Girl for the headsup and brief trip down memory lane.